Richard Bausch is the author of eight collections of stories and fifteen novels. His most recent publication is the novel Before, During, After (2014). Something is Out There (2010), The Stories of Richard Bausch (2004), The Fireman’s Wife and Other Stories (1990), and Spirits and Other Stories (1987) are among his short story collections. The Last Good Time: a Novel (1984) was made into a feature-length film starring Armin Meuhler-Stahl and Maureen Stapleton, released in 1995. His novel Peace (2008) was awarded the 2010 Dayton International Literary Peace Prize. Richard Bausch won the Rea Award for the Short Story in 2012. Other awards and honors include two National Magazine Awards, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lila-Wallace Reader’s Digest Award, the Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the 2004 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. His short stories have appeared often in numerous periodicals and anthologies including The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The New Yorker, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Pushcart Prize, and Granta, The Modern Library published The Selected Stories of Richard Bausch in March, 1996, a distinction rarely accorded a contemporary writer. Bausch is professor in the Writing Program at Chapman University in Orange, California.
Robert Olen Butler is the author of six short story collections and fifteen novels. His story collection A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was reviewed as changing forever the composition of Vietnam-related fiction. A recipient of both a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts grant, Butler also won the 1993 Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the 1993 PEN/Faulkner Award. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and honored multiple times in The Pushcart Prize. His stories have appeared widely in such publications as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Zoetrope, The Paris Review, The Hudson Review The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, The Sewanee Review and most recently in The New Granta Book of the American Short Story, edited by Richard Ford. Butler’s work is four times recognized in the annual Best American Short Stories and in eight editions of New Stories from the South. Severance (2006), a collection of stories, was the basis of a one-act play by David Jette produced in 2007 at the Los Angeles McCadden Place Theatre. His works have been translated into nineteen languages, including Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Polish, Japanese, Serbian, Farsi, Czech, Estonian, and Greek. He is a Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University and lives in Capps, Florida
Elizabeth Strout won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2009 for her collection of short stories Olive Kitteridge (2008). Olive Kitteridge was also a 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and in 2010 won the Premio Bancarella an Italian literary award. In 2014 Olive Kitteridge aired on HBO as a two-part mini-series starring Frances McDormand. Strout authored three novels Amy and Isabelle (1998), Abide With Me (2006), and The Burgess Boys (2013). Amy and Isabelle won the 1999 Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was also a 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist. Amy and Isabelle was adapted as a television movie starring Elizabeth Shue. Strout’s stories appeared in many periodicals and anthologies. Her story Toads and Snakes was included in The Friend Who Got Away (2005), an anthology by Jenny Offill and Elissa Schappell. Strout was editor of Best American Short Stories in 2013. Elizabeth Strout teaches English at Manhattan Community College in New York City. She lives with her husband Jim Tierney in New York City and Maine.